Felipe Arraño’s Reviews > Age of Assassins > Status Update

The attacks/shootings in the US were events that disseminated unease, but their practical influence proved negligible (p. 319). Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Duchess Sophie by Bosnian Serbs (pp. 330-333). The killer, Princip, try to kill himself but the cyanide pill didn’t work, he was arrested before being killed by the mob (p. 333). The assassination was certainly the precipitating factor that destroyed Austrian power and unleashed WWI (p. 334). The origins of the killings remain a mystery (p. 334). The Austrians pressed for war, but only to settle scores with Serbia, a smaller enemy whose certain defeat would bolster the Empire; they never intended WWI which would burn down their power (p. 337). When France was deciding to go to war, Raoul Villain (a French nationalist) killed the Socialist Jean Jaurès who was against going to war (pp. 339-340). This was the last blow of pre-war conflict over socialism (p. 340). In 1919, Villain was acquitted on the basis pf hereditary mental instability; he was assassinated by Spanish Republicans in 1936 (p. 340). European right became itself a revolutionary movement, not conservative and reasonable, but radical and irrational (p. 340).